The Center for Western Priorities had some interesting stuff today. This looks like a great idea to me, public input to prioritize parcels for improved access. But the question I always ask is… would this make sense for the FS and BLM to do together in some way, even though the FS does not have the Dingell Act? Perhaps the FS could somehow coast on Interior’s coattails?
The Bureau of Land Management unveiled a new online portal where members of the public can nominate parcels of land for improved access. The agency is looking for help identifying parcels where recreational opportunities are high, but access is difficult or impossible. BLM will use this process to create a priority list of parcels that Congress could make accessible.
There are currently 8.3 million acres of public land that remain inaccessible to the public due to inholdings of private land and other barriers. Taking action to open this land to public access is beneficial for hikers, anglers, and hunters. It will allow recreationists to enjoy public land without risking a trespassing lawsuit, which has been highlighted in the ongoing corner-crossing case in Wyoming.
“It is clear the American public is passionate about increasing access to public lands,” BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning said in a statement. “This new technology to gather nominations will help us organize what we anticipate will be an equally robust response in 2022.”
And on the below topic.. I disagree with Aaron that one more political appointee will help the process of doing more leasing. In fact, it seems that given what political appointees actually say (if we assume that doing and saying are related; not always clear for those of a political bent), probably fewer of them are needed (and more career employees).
Interior nominee kept waiting over Manchin energy demands
Environmental groups are increasingly frustrated by delays to confirm Interior nominee Laura Daniel-Davis in the Senate. The stalled nomination is indicative of the larger political battle over fossil fuel development on public lands. Senate Energy and Natural Resources Chair Joe Manchin delayed the confirmation in March while he waited to see how the administration responded to his demands for more fossil fuel production on public lands. Aaron Weiss, deputy director of the Center for Western Priorities said confirming Daniel-Davis would help address lawmaker concerns, and added, “If you want Interior to get moving on this stuff, give Interior the people to do it.”
Many very excellent folks worked hard for years on developing this joint plan (which did not survive as joint, as far as I know).
Somewhere there should be a history of efforts to bring various parts of BLM and the Forest Service together. Maybe there is and I haven’t seen it. When I joined the FS the Reagan Administration was exploring the idea of exchange of land called Interchange, as I recall.
A few of us were discussing the more recent Service First approach in a previous thread.. I think that there may have been important lessons to be learned from those experiments. I have asked the folks I remember, and their contacts to write posts for The Smokey Wire (note, that offer still holds), to tell their story, but no one has taken me up on it.
So I thought I’d post what our findings were on the Forest Service side of the SJPLC (San Juan Public Lands Center, the joint unit) joint BLM/FS Review by the RO/State Office. Suffice it to say that there were strongly different cultural norms for each agency in terms of reviews. Our FS review got hung up because the Forest and the RO couldn’t agree on the findings and recommendations. That’s another story. Nevertheless, below is the Forest Service draft document section on Service First. As I may have written before, to many of us politically imparied individuals, it was a bit of a mystery as to why the experiments in Colorado were suddenly shut down. Perhaps someone out there knows. Anyway, I think you can hear some of the employees’ pros and cons from this writeup.
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Service First
Service First is great for customer service, one-stop shopping, and landscape or resource management. However, differences in administration, IT, budget and processes are ongoing barriers to meeting the objectives and intent of Service First. Service First efforts create better products in the end, but in some cases, the process takes much longer to finish.
Many employees question higher level commitment to support Service First. WO/RO/SO levels do not appear to “walk the talk” when it comes to supporting Service First. Initial promises to streamline efforts and remove barriers have not materialized. Consequently, Service First continues to be difficult. There is little recognition of the increased workload associated with Service First. Following two sets of rules takes more time and money. We heard some instances in which employees follow whatever agency’s rules are most restrictive for joint projects. On the other hand, sometimes both agencies can use the less restrictive practice, such as for hiring.
Service First efforts invariably require more communication between RO/SO and the unit so that all three offices hear the same issues and participate in the solution.
The frustration level is high. Employees are frustrated by the heavy workload and many are working extra hours. Service First may exacerbate workload and burden shift in the sense that dealing with “one ASC is difficult, two would be impossible.” The BLM is considering a similar reorganization of administrative support. It appears as if the LT doesn’t fully understand the level of frustration that some employees are feeling, at least from the employees’ perspective.
There is a perception that there are no consequences for employees that do not support Service First and actively attempt to sabotage or work against Service First goals.
Recommendations
* SJPLC needs to do a review to examine whether or not Service First (versus individual performance or other issues) is impacting getting work done.
* SJPLC should identify, in a memo to the Regional Forester and State Director, those aspects of administrative procedures that are a barrier to Service First, and that are beyond the unit’s ability to address.
* RO/SO needs to clearly articulate the goals and objectives of Service First. What are the expectations? The RO/SO offices need to consider the impacts of State and Regional policy on Service First units.
* Either devise a way to compensate for a combined unit or allow for inconsistencies.
* Jointly explore opportunities to institutionalize the concept of one interagency budget, one set of interagency targets and one set of budgeting policies and procedures for this (and other Service First units). Pursue with more fervor and persistence than after the identical findings on the Rio Grande review.
* Examine ways to foster better communication between RO/SO/unit.
* Identify representatives from each office and develop a joint communication plan.
* Pursue getting WO employees (BLM Imagination Team) at Dolores to contribute toward operating expenses. Identify other detached employees to determine if they contribute to operating expenses.
* Pursue reciprocity agreements for training (e.g., security). (Copy R-6 and Oregon/Washington BLM.)
* The State Director and the Regional Forester need to agree on their expectations as to how Service First should work.
* PLC leadership team should use Service First language in employee performance reviews to help hold employees accountable if this isn’t already being done.
On December 10, 2021, the Biden Administration released the Fall 2021 Unified Agenda of Regulatory and Deregulatory Actions, which is a semi-annual compilation of information concerning regulations and policy under development by federal agencies. I’ve pulled out the Forest Service and BLM entries below.
This link was provided in this blog post focused primarily on the Endangered Species Act and “the regulated community” (and on undoing Trump administration regulatory changes). The one individual species proposal that may affect (eastern) national forests concerns the northern long-eared bat, and possible critical habitat designation (it is currently listed as threatened). It also notes proposed rules by the Council on Environmental Quality revising National Environmental Policy Act implementing regulations (targeting climate change).
Since we spent some time talking about the old BLM, and then its new Director, I thought it worth sharing this interview with Tracy Stone-Manning by Lee Newspapers. It’s too bad, though, that there wasn’t a question about what she thought about the Forest Service and interagency coordination. Some key policy points …
As of today, Stone-Manning has a pretty large to-do list: Reform BLM’s oil and gas leasing system and achieve the agency’s energy mission largely through the use of renewables. Promulgate new rules governing grazing leases that are fair and good for the landscape. Ensure that recreationists will still be able to find beauty, quiet and solitude. In short, she says, manage not for process but for outcome — leaving both the agency and the vast land it manages in better shape than they were when she started.
“I think people saw that confirmation process for what it is, a sign of our times. I’ve had nothing but a warm welcome here at the agency. People are relieved to have a confirmed director and they are ready to go.”
“The last Administration said it had an energy-dominant agenda for public lands. We need to get back to our true calling, under the law, of being a multiple-use agency. Addressing conservation and climate change is part of that multiple use.”
“The priority is already shifted to renewable energy development. I want to be able to prove up on that, to show we can power this country well with renewable energy. And as for the development that is continuing as a result of existing rights, I want to ensure that those doing the developing are paying their fair share for resources that come out of the ground that we all own together, and ensure that the siting is responsibly done.”
“Climate change isn’t blue or red, it’s affecting us all in the West. Every Montanan breathed wildfire smoke last summer. Every rancher is seeing impacts of drought on the landscape. One thing that typically unites Americans is that we solve problems. My focus is going to be consistently on trying to solve problems with people who are willing to come to the table to work on them. The only way through the polarization is to be frank and transparent and not to step into the fray but to acknowledge it.”
“We are going to come forward with a draft grazing rule… “We’re in the midst of what some people call a megadrought and others call the new normal. We have to figure out how to manage for the health of the landscape. In many cases cows can help us do that if we’re really smart about how we use the tool that we call grazing. Outcome-based grazing is the new effort at the agency. The thought behind it is exactly where we need to go: Determine the outcome we’re looking for on the landscape and graze accordingly.
I think it’s safe to assume that same “outcome-based” strategy would apply to its forest management program as well, which should align with what the Forest Service has said it is doing. She added this other interesting comment, in response to a question about a proposal to graze bison on BLM lands in Montana.
“Our job is to manage for the health of landscape and implement the law. We’re certainly aware of the sensitivities of that cultural question. But that’s what it is, a cultural question. We don’t manage culture, we manage landscape outcomes.”
AP story today..by Matthew Brown in the Associated Press, here’s a version via NBC News.
But without the climate bill, tax incentives to build large-scale solar will drop to 10 percent of a developer’s total capital costs by 2024, instead of rising to 30 percent, said Xiaojing Sun, head solar researcher at industry consulting firm Wood Mackenzie.
Incentives for residential-scale solar would go away completely by 2024, she said.
“It will significantly slow down the growth of solar,” Sun said.
Many people wonder how solar can be cheapest and also require subsidies. But the answer to “without BBB” might be to pass a specific and targeted “renewable energy” bill. It also makes a person wonder things like “what is fair market value for federal land leases of a more or less permanent nature?” and “should biomass from fuel treatments have equivalent tax treatment?”
However, she added that streamlining access to federal land could help the industry, as large solar farms on non-federal lands face growing local opposition and cumbersome zoning laws.
And we all know that there are no problems with local opposition and cumbersome regulations on federal lands, so this should be easy.
The Bureau of Land Management oversees almost a quarter-billion acres of land, primarily in Western states. Agency director Tracy-Stone Manning said boosting renewable energy is now one of its top priorities.
Forty large-scale solar proposals in the West are under consideration, she said.
The agency in early December issued a draft plan to reduce rents and other fees paid by companies authorized to build wind and solar projects on public lands. Officials were unable to provide an estimate of how much money that could save developers.
In Nevada, where the federal government owns and manages more than 80% of the state’s land, large-scale solar projects have faced opposition from environmentalists concerned about harm to plants and animals in the sun- and windswept deserts.
Developers abandoned plans for what would have been the country’s largest solar panel installation earlier this year north of Las Vegas amid concerns from local residents. Environmentalists are fighting another solar project near the Nevada-California border that they claim could harm birds and desert tortoises.
Stone-Manning said solar projects on public lands are being sited to take environmental concerns into account.
The solar development zones were first proposed under the Obama administration, which in 2012 adopted plans to bring utility-scale solar energy projects to public lands in Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah. Officials have identified almost 1,400 square miles (3,500 square kilometers) of public land for potential leasing for solar power.
Here’s the link to the 2012 Solar PEIS if you want to see maps to all the states. Also, for Coloradans, here’s the comments for the 2011 meeting in Alamosa. It will be interesting to watch how this programmatic is used in site-specific approvals. Also, not sure why only the southwest was analyzed, the reasoning is probably buried in here somewhere. A quick look at the map and the county poverty maps in Colorado suggest that environmental justice concerns might come into play.. unless solar doesn’t evoke those concerns.
I think it would be interesting to get a map of full-scale solar and wind build out on federal, state and private lands before people got too involved in Wilderness-y designations for Biden Admin priority 30 x 30.
“We fully intend to meet our clean energy goals,” Haaland said. She said the Trump administration stalled clean energy by shuttering renewable energy offices at the Bureau of Land Management and undermining long-term agreements, such as a conservation plan tied to solar development in the California desert.
Retiree network scuttlebutt says there is indeed a great deal of pressure to get out these decisions at BLM, including some push to downplay environmental concerns. Should be interesting to watch how this goes, plus any “streamlining access” efforts.
Yesterday Steve asked after Jon “what does the FS do well?” And remember our own Colorado Senator Bennet was quoted as saying “When you combine the effects of climate change with the profound negligence of the federal government in terms of managing its national forests, these places are profound dangers to our communities and to our economy,” It seems like these are potentially finger-pointing statements (has finger-pointing replaced baseball as the national pastime?). Whose fault? The “federal government” as Bennet says, or the specific agency?
Conveniently, we have a different federal agency (BLM) with a different culture, who also manages for multiple use, so perhaps that is an apt comparison. And if I were to oversimplify (and echo former Wyo Governor Freudenthal) different stripes of admins generally push agencies to do more of some things and less of other things; while career folks negotiate these waves of preferred priorities, sometimes hunkering down and sometimes surfing. I think that there is something to be learned from comparing the two agencies, though, and fortunately many career folks have switched back and forth so there is information to be had.
One of the not so good comparisons is that (according to my sources) FLPMA requires/allows the head of BLM to be a political appointee. This makes for an entirely different career/political interface than the FS. As folks interested in good government, and what programs/policies (e.g. e-bikes, consultation, and so on) make sense to be similar for the two agencies, it’s interesting to observe how this politicization plays out.
Here’s a story in The Hill about the move back of career leaders from Grand Junction:
The Bureau of Land Management (BLM) will move several of its leadership positions back to Washington, D.C., after a controversial Trump-era move to send leadership to Grand Junction, Colo.
An email sent out by BLM Director Tracy Stone-Manning that was obtained by The Hill states that the agency will “consolidate” most of its directors in Washington.
Specifically, it states that the director and deputy director of operations have already returned to the district, joining the deputy director for policy and programs. It said that 8 additional leaders including “most assistant directors and deputy assistant directors” will also return to D.C.
The message also said that 30 vacant headquarters senior positions will be based in D.C.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department, which oversees the BLM, confirmed the accuracy of the email that was obtained by The Hill, which specified the fate of the 11 leadership positions and 30 vacancies.
Spokesperson Melissa Schwartz also confirmed that a total of about 100 positions including 60 existing positions and the aforementioned 41 jobs will be based in D.C.
Thirty-six jobs will stay in Grand Junction, and are expected to be complimented by more yet-to-be posted jobs that were referenced in Stone-Manning’s email.
In 2019, the Trump administration announced that the Bureau of Land Management would move its headquarters from Washington D.C., to Grand Junction.
It argued that the move, which was completed last year, would put officials closer to the lands that they managed.
But critics saw it as an attempt to drive out career officials who may not have wanted to move west.
The Biden administration announced in September that it would restore its D.C. headquarters, but also maintain the Colorado office as its “Western headquarters.”
The Stone-Manning email that was obtained by The Hill states that two positions, the national conservation lands and community partnerships assistant director and deputy assistant director, will “anchor” the Colorado office.
She wrote that the office will “anticipate” posting additional positions that “reflect that office’s leadership role in BLM’s outdoor recreation, conservation, clean energy, and scientific missions, as well as outreach and Tribal consultation.”
Her message said that the fate of some positions remains up in the air.
My contacts in the Retiree Network say that replacing BLM SES folks (senior executives) with those with favored political leanings is actually SOP for new color-changing administrations, and also it’s happening as we speak. Also, I didn’t realize that BLM had a scientific mission.. at one point I thought that the USGS had taken over the research functions of all the Interior agencies .. but perhaps they grew back organically.
Anyone who knows more about any of this, please add.
Westlands Solar Park is being built on former farmland in California’s San Joaquin Valley, which many environmentalists see as preferable to renewable energy development on undisturbed landscapes. (Carolyn Cole / Los Angeles Times)
Another excellent, comprehensive story from Sammy Roth of the LA Times. We’ve discussed the planning processes before, and see that Roth spoke with Mark Squillace. We discussed his planning ideas here and here.
But what about Biden’s other energy promise for America’s public lands — that his presidency would be a boon for the construction of solar and wind farms, which would create jobs and tax revenues and limit the need for fossil fuels?
The president’s track record there is mixed at best, at least so far.
I don’t know what “some climate advocates” expect.. the Biden Admin to ignore federal judges?
The Bureau of Land Management — which oversees nearly 250 million acres of public lands, or about one-tenth of the country’s surface area — has approved just one solar farm since Biden took office. It hasn’t approved a single wind farm. The agency has also signed off on three geothermal power plants, which can produce climate-friendly electricity around the clock.
For some perspective, I called up Peter Weiner, a San Francisco-based attorney who represents solar developers trying to get projects built on public lands across the West. Overall he had positive things to say about political appointees and career staff at the Bureau of Land Management, and their efforts to issue permits for renewable energy. He said he expects the agency to approve three more solar farms in the next month, all in California’s Riverside County, south of Joshua Tree National Park.
I asked Weiner whether he thinks the Biden administration is on track to meet a congressional target of permitting 25 gigawatts of renewable energy on federal lands by 2025. He thinks they’re behind, but he’s hopeful that approvals will start to come faster.
“I’m cautiously optimistic that things are going to change, but goddamn they’re slow to change,” he said.
What’s the holdup, exactly? Weiner pointed to staffing shortages spurred by President Trump’s half-baked plan to move Bureau of Land Management headquarters to Colorado, which led to an exodus of employees. Getting political appointees in place during the Biden administration’s first year hasn’t been a quick process, either. Weiner told me that when he’s talked with some of the president’s top appointees on public lands policy, he’s learned they have meetings scheduled every half-hour the entire day. How much can you get done when you’re spread that thin?” he asked.
I get that losing 200 out of 8000 employees could possibly mess things up.. but as far as I know, political appointees aren’t necessary to process permitting (perhaps to check on the final approvals and make sure they don’t irritate anyone politically important?) I also don’t know why “acting” politicals (which seem to have been there speedily following the election) couldn’t have done the same work. Perhaps BLM-ers out there can explain that? Or maybe Weiner is getting it wrong, and it’s just the standard processes are slow.
I also talked with Tom Vinson, vice president for federal regulatory affairs at the American Clean Power Assn., a trade group for solar and wind power companies. He said the challenges with building renewable energy on public lands predate the current administration, and it’s too much to expect Biden’s team to eliminate those obstacles in less than a year.
Still, Vinson is optimistic that changes are coming. He pointed out that the Bureau of Land Management recently issued a call for suggestions to improve renewable energy permitting, to which his group responded with several ideas for easing barriers. He also pointed out that, despite the small number of public lands projects the Biden administration has approved so far, federal officials are moving forward with the environmental analysis for at least wind one farm in Idaho, as well as several solar projects.
“They are trying to make projects work, both wind and solar. At the same time, they’re trying to improve the underlying process by which projects are permitted,” he said. “We are optimistic that they understand the potential for renewables on public lands, and want to capture that and recognize that there are barriers to doing so under the current rules.”
I should stop here and state that blindly approving every renewable energy facility a developer wants to build on public lands is not a good idea. As I’ve written previously, solar and wind farms can destroy sensitive ecosystems, which is one reason many clean energy advocates prefer rooftop solar panels to sprawling solar farms. There’s a difficult-to-navigate tension between building much-needed renewable power plants to prevent climate catastrophe and protecting biodiversity and wild landscapes.
The one solar farm the Biden administration has approved thus far — the 2,000-acre Crimson project in California’s Riverside County, which could include 350 megawatts of solar and 350 megawatts of battery storage — helps illustrate that tension.
Before the Interior Department signed off on Crimson, the Center for Biological Diversity filed a protest, arguing that officials had failed to adequately study possible harm to desert tortoises, Mojave fringe-toed lizards and other creatures, including fragmentation of their habitat. The conservation group Basin and Range Watch also protested. So did the Colorado River Indian Tribes, which cited potential damage to Indigenous archaeological sites and the importance of desert wildlife to tribal culture and religion.
Note that the convenient narrative that Tribes are against oil and gas but are for renewables, isn’t always true (not to speak of mining for minerals that renewables require). So renewable folks are going to have to work through the same involvement processes as everyone else… and that takes time. Unless it’s determined that renewable buildout is so important that various processes need to be speeded up. So 1) giving Tribes their rightful decision making authority, 2) protecting landscapes a la 30 x30, and 3) massively expanding renewables and 4) protecting T&E species (e.g. sage grouse) may not be an easy needle to thread.
Mark Squillace, a professor of natural resources law at the University of Colorado Law School, suggested that smarter, more efficient federal land use planning could help get solar and wind farms built more quickly while minimizing environmental conflicts.
In a 2019 paper, Squillace proposed a new “layered planning” model in which the Bureau of Land Management would start by identifying its overall goals for an entire landscape — say, a watershed or wildlife corridor — and then work its way down to decisions about specific projects, such as a solar farm. That would cut down on cumbersome planning processes that can currently take a decade, while making it easier to assess the tradeoffs between renewable energy and conservation, Squillace told me.
“The current system is inefficient, and not necessarily the best, in terms of predicting the adverse impacts,” he said.
I reached out to the Biden administration for comment, asking the Interior Department what it has done to achieve Biden’s goal of promoting renewable energy on public lands and how they’d respond to criticism that they aren’t moving fast enough.
Tyler Cherry, the department’s press secretary, told me the Bureau of Land Management is currently processing applications for 36 solar projects, four wind projects and four geothermal projects, with preliminary review underway for an additional 64 solar and wind applications. He also pointed to the aforementioned call for suggestions on renewable energy permitting, saying officials are open to suggestions on issues such as the rent paid by developers and the amount of time it takes to process applications.
Squillace and I have had many discussions about FS planning and planning rules.. but I don’t see how landscape level planning would be less cumbersome and more “efficient.” What if all the landscape planning said “not here”? It seems to me anytime folks want to propose projects that other people don’t want, public involvement is some somewhat at odds with the concept of “efficiency” and speed. But perhaps there are ideas out there for how to do all three (involvement/collaboration, speed, required levels of analysis).
Lots of interesting stuff here. Roth says:
America’s public lands are a lot of things to a lot of people. For me, they’re an amazing refuge for hiking and camping. For many Westerners, they’re a source of economic sustenance thanks to oil and gas, timber or grazing. For others, they’re perfect for off-roading, hunting or fishing. For endangered wildlife on a heating planet, they’re some of the last best places to survive.
It’s probably not fair to ask these special places to help solve the climate crisis, too. But we may not have much choice.
It might be interesting to have a national programmatic EIS that looks at wind and solar on private and federal lands, plus other options (nuclear, geothermal) and including the effects of new transmission facilities, life cycle analysis of all environmental effects of the options, and so on. With input from all the experts and practitioners of all the energy options, as well as grid managers and experts. Fans of programmatics might like this idea.. or not.
Not being an expert, and being in a hurry to get back to post-Thanksgiving cleanup, here is what I found. I bet some TSW folks already know these issues and can add or correct if I got the terminology wrong, and place these changes in context of “what has been talked about for the last 20 years or so”. The recommendations also seem to track 2009 and 2019 GAO reports.
Here we’re interested in onshore.
Aside: one thing mentioned in the public forum that I hadn’t heard before is that offshore production in the Gulf is lower in methane than other sources. Which if true, relates to COP26 and pledges to reduce methane. The virtual public forum was held in March of this year and I posted about it here.
BLM should start rulemakings to:
*adjust royalty rates
* Increase minimum prices at lease sale (bonus bids).
* increase rental rates (what companies pay until the lease in in production)
* increase minimum bond amounts
As to planning:
Onshore
Through the land use planning process, BLM determines what lands may be available for oil and gas leasing, what lease stipulations will be applied to protect other resources and values, and what “conditions of approval” may be necessary on permits to drill for additional protection. The land use planning process requires extensive collaboration with Tribal, State, and local governments and the public regarding how Federal lands will be used and minerals will be extracted at specific locations.
As an overarching policy, BLM should ensure that oil and gas is not prioritized over other land uses, consistent with BLM’s mandate of multiple-use and sustained yield. The BLM should carefully consider what lands make the most sense to lease in terms of expected yields of oil and gas, prospects of earning a fair return for U.S. taxpayers, and conflicts with other uses, such as outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat. The BLM should always ensure it is considering the views of local communities, Tribes, businesses, State and local governments, and other stakeholders.
Low Potential Lands
Common practice in BLM land use planning has been to leave the majority of Federal lands open for leasing and allow industry to drive decisions on what areas will be nominated for oil and gas leasing. Since there is no cost to nominate parcels of land for leasing, there is little disincentive for companies to identify large amounts of acreage regardless of the resource potential of that land or how seriously the nominator is considering bidding for the nominated parcels. The burden and expense then fall on BLM to process those parcels, triggering the dedication of BLM staff resources to analyze marginal lands that companies may not be interested in bidding on and that may never be leased, much less developed. At the same time, sales of large amounts of low potential land often ignite local community concerns (particularly since low-potential lands are more likely to be in areas that are not accustomed to local oil and gas development) and result in
protests that are time-consuming and resource-intensive to adjudicate.
The BLM should evaluate operational adjustments to its leasing program that will avoid nomination or leasing of low potential lands and instead focus on areas that have moderate or high potential.
I wonder about this..
The BLM should carefully consider what lands make the most sense to lease in terms of expected yields of oil and gas, prospects of earning a fair return for U.S. taxpayers, and conflicts with other uses, such as outdoor recreation and wildlife habitat.
I don’t know for sure, but I expect they already do that, as they do for any other energy permitting.
I also like this
The burden and expense then fall on BLM to process those parcels, triggering the dedication of BLM staff resources to analyze marginal lands that companies may not be interested in bidding on and that may never be leased, much less developed. At the same time, sales of large amounts of low potential land often ignite local community concerns (particularly since low-potential lands are more likely to be in areas that are not accustomed to local oil and gas development) and result in protests that are time-consuming and resource-intensive to adjudicate.
Most BLM staff GAO spoke with said vacancies in key headquarters positions caused delays in creating or clarifying guidance or policy. Further, some said an increased reliance on details negatively affected their office’s performance—for example, because state office staff detailed to headquarters reduced capacity in state offices. Without complete and reliable data on vacancies and details across the agency, BLM officials cannot make informed decisions about filling vacancies and initiating details to help the agency achieve its mission and goals.
GAO also found that BLM does not have an agency-wide strategic workforce plan that supports its mission and programmatic goals. BLM officials told GAO their mechanism for strategic workforce planning is a 2019 memorandum, but this memorandum generally does not address the two critical needs that define strategic workforce planning: (1) aligning the human capital program with emerging mission goals and (2) developing long-term strategies for acquiring, developing, and retaining staff to achieve programmatic goals. Without a strategic workforce plan that addresses these needs, BLM lacks reasonable assurance the agency will have the workforce necessary to achieve its goals in managing millions of acres of public lands.
I wonder how many agencies have such a plan? in 2010 GAO did a study that recommended this for Interior, EPA and the FS. In 2021 testimony, Chief Christiansen said “We are stewarding the Forest Service through this change with strategic workforce planning and collaboratively managing all operations within our allocated budgets.”
“In our interviews with 13 BLM staff members, almost all told us that the loss of experienced staff negatively affected their offices’ ability to conduct its duties,” the report said. “For example, one staff member said that the loss of institutional knowledge about laws and regulations meant that BLM was not able to provide knowledgeable input on proposed rules and legislation.”
I think it’s very interesting that BLM would have so much less capacity – no “knowledgeable input” or had all its “institutional knowledge” in DC, and none elsewhere. Maybe the exceedingly knowledgeable folks (about planning, and the legal folks) I’ve run into at BLM have been the exception, rather than the rule.
The WaPo story focuses on Blacks. But you may notice the increases in representation of Asians, Hispanics, American Indians and Alaska Natives between 2016 and 2021. If you add the numbers, they added 167 more diverse people, and lost 26.
Among a host of troublingdiversity data, Grijalva wrote in a letter obtained by The Washington Post, “one of the most alarming statistics is that there are only 312 Black/African American employees nationwide at the agency, less than 3.5 percent of the BLM workforce” of about 9,000 people.
It’s hard for me to imagine that this low number was entirely the fault of an administration with one four-year term.
The upheaval also drainedthe agency of its most experienced career civil servants. The percentage of BLM staff with at least 25 years of service at Interior declined from 24 percent to 17 percent during the Trump administration.
I don’t know if the BLM is like the FS with large chunks of people hired at one time and then fewer .. this could also influence the percentages. The whole problem of loss of experience through retirement has been identified as a serious problem by many agencies. But I don’t think we know how much of the retirements were due to “the upheaval” without asking the retirees themselves. Most people I know have a complex mix of reasons they choose to retire; and many don’t like R administration policies in general. Programs like ACES for the Forest Service and NRCS, and Department of the Interior Experienced Services Program are designed to help with those transitions as older folks retire.
Lots of other interesting information in the report to discuss.
Just one of the many Trump Administration actions that the Biden Administration is trying to undo, but rebuilding the BLM will be more complicated than rewriting a regulation. (Back then we were saying this.)
Two years after President Donald Trump decided to move the bureau’s headquarters to Grand Junction, a small city in the mountains of Colorado with no direct flight links with D.C., Biden plans to bring it back. But the agency remains severely depleted, according to interviews with more than 20 current and former Interior Department employees, hobbling the Biden administration’s work.
With the BLM, Interior Department leaders are now confronting a particularly daunting version of a task that is familiar in many corners of the federal bureaucracy: rebuilding institutions that Trump spent four years breaking down.
Trump “destroyed the effectiveness of the agency,” said a BLM employee, one of the 41 former headquarters staffers who relocated to Western posts. “Everything’s broken down.”
There are now situations in which an employee from Salt Lake City reports to a supervisor in Denver, who reports to a supervisor in Grand Junction, who reports to a supervisor in D.C., when previously all four of them were in the nation’s capital.
New people hired into headquarters positions often came from state agencies or were promoted from jobs in the field and are unfamiliar with the ways of Washington. Employees say budget discussions that once might have taken hours take days or weeks as new managers struggle to navigate unfamiliar terrain.
Haaland later said the “real cost” of the move was the loss of more than 200 “valued, experienced career employees who felt that they couldn’t uproot themselves the way the administration wanted them to.”
The impact on minority employees has been particularly stark.
The move decimated the ranks of the planning staff responsible for establishing multi-decade rules for how the country’s public lands can be used, including setting the balance between fossil fuel extraction and conservation. That division had more than 20 headquarters positions during Trump’s first year in office. Just four of those people remained after the move.
“It’s like they intensely wanted to create dysfunction in the agency. And they did. They succeeded in that.”
And so, Tracy Stone-Manning has been set up to fail, and we shouldn’t expect a whole lot for awhile from BLM’s plans for “a multiyear shift from fossil fuels to renewable energy on public lands.”
